Pi Zero Availability

[Drzacek]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7I_j5OEhwg
posted without comment

How else would they know, if they are there yet?

[RaTTuS]

https://twitter.com/9_ties/status/694816468475588608 is why you cannot have nice things

[jamesh]

https://twitter.com/9_ties/status/694816468475588608 is why you cannot have nice things

That a cool bit of kit.


As for the 'simple' question of when will they be available, it's not a simple question. They are being made as fast as possible. How those are them spread out to distributors I don't know, but demand is much higher than supply, so they are going to disappear off the shelves very quickly.

[hippy]

My hypothesis hypothetically based on the historic facts is, roughly every two weeks you will see pimoroni get a batch 2000 pi0 boards

Assuming other official retailers are getting the same; that would suggest a current output of 16,000 per month, or 4,000 per week. That compares to 80,000 other Pi per week Sony said they were producing in October last year.

If there are people out there wanting a million Pi Zeroes; at that those rates it would take 5 years to fulfil demand. To deliver that number within six months it would require manufacturing 40,000 a week.

It is not surprising, and entirely predictable, that it will take some time for production to ramp up to such volumes. Especially as the Zero is a low margin product and it would not make economic sense to massively reduce other Pi production to facilitate manufacturing Zeroes.

[Pithagoros]

The Pihut have been on twitter.

They have stock of Zeros but they are waiting on UK customs for delivery of some of the parts that will be sold with the Zeros in the kit bundles.

[jamesh]

My hypothesis hypothetically based on the historic facts is, roughly every two weeks you will see pimoroni get a batch 2000 pi0 boards

Assuming other official retailers are getting the same; that would suggest a current output of 16,000 per month, or 4,000 per week. That compares to 80,000 other Pi per week Sony said they were producing in October last year.

If there are people out there wanting a million Pi Zeroes; at that those rates it would take 5 years to fulfil demand. To deliver that number within six months it would require manufacturing 40,000 a week.

It is not surprising, and entirely predictable, that it will take some time for production to ramp up to such volumes. Especially as the Zero is a low margin product and it would not make economic sense to massively reduce other Pi production to facilitate manufacturing Zeroes.

Good analysis. The only safe assumption to make is that it will take some time to satisfy demand (which is still very unpredictable - is there demand for 1M Zero's?), and there isn't much more that can be done to speed things up right now.

[mung]

https://twitter.com/9_ties/status/694816468475588608 is why you cannot have nice things

That a cool bit of kit.


As for the 'simple' question of when will they be available, it's not a simple question. They are being made as fast as possible. How those are them spread out to distributors I don't know, but demand is much higher than supply, so they are going to disappear off the shelves very quickly.

That is not really a cool bit of kit, but that is probably due to the fact that no rpi has yet been designed specifically for cluster integration.

A very nice plaything and learning experience but I doubt it is as efficient as the best cluster systems?

A much cooler thing is a link I noticed further down on that twitter feed https://github.com/nineties/py-videocore It looks like someone is working on easy python gpgpu integration.

[mung]

My hypothesis hypothetically based on the historic facts is, roughly every two weeks you will see pimoroni get a batch 2000 pi0 boards

Assuming other official retailers are getting the same; that would suggest a current output of 16,000 per month, or 4,000 per week. That compares to 80,000 other Pi per week Sony said they were producing in October last year.

If there are people out there wanting a million Pi Zeroes; at that those rates it would take 5 years to fulfil demand. To deliver that number within six months it would require manufacturing 40,000 a week.

It is not surprising, and entirely predictable, that it will take some time for production to ramp up to such volumes. Especially as the Zero is a low margin product and it would not make economic sense to massively reduce other Pi production to facilitate manufacturing Zeroes.

Good analysis. The only safe assumption to make is that it will take some time to satisfy demand (which is still very unpredictable - is there demand for 1M Zero's?), and there isn't much more that can be done to speed things up right now.

My analysis is that pi0 are only being produced to fill slack in the manufacturing capacity.

I guess the margin is probably so close to zero that its only worth making them if the factory would be sat around doing nothing otherwise.

One option would be to start a campaign to boycott purchase of other more profitable pi, thus reducing factory utilisation and meaning more pi0 are produced in the slack.

[jamesh]

Good analysis. The only safe assumption to make is that it will take some time to satisfy demand (which is still very unpredictable - is there demand for 1M Zero's?), and there isn't much more that can be done to speed things up right now.

My analysis is that pi0 are only being produced to fill slack in the manufacturing capacity.

I guess the margin is probably so close to zero that its only worth making them if the factory would be sat around doing nothing otherwise.

One option would be to start a campaign to boycott purchase of other more profitable pi, thus reducing factory utilisation and meaning more pi0 are produced in the slack.

There isn't any slack in capacity on the normal models. They are made full time, demand is still pretty damn high.

[eltel]

Thanks to all for your input. At least some people are getting the product.
Looks like I will have to wait till next year for this project
ce la vie !

[blc]

https://twitter.com/9_ties/status/694816468475588608 is why you cannot have nice things

I got all excited then and thought they were using surface mount Mini HDMI plugs. They're my Holy Grail at the moment.

[hippy]

One option would be to start a campaign to boycott purchase of other more profitable pi, thus reducing factory utilisation and meaning more pi0 are produced in the slack.

Another might be to find some means by which demand for Zeroes could be measured. That might help encourage Sony to arrange for more capacity and might even create a few more jobs.

A real issue though is that profit on 1 million Zeroes ( a $5 million a year market ) would be far lower than the profit on the 4 million they are producing which is probably a $150 million a year market.

As there is such little profit in it for the Foundation either, it might be worthwhile opening the Zero up for cloning as the original plans for the Pi were. The Foundation could become a reseller of SoC's and still make a reasonable profit from selling to cloners.

[Heater]

hippy,

...opening the Zero up for cloning as the original plans for the Pi were.

Do you have a link to such plans ?

Having followed the Pi closely since the beginning I have never seen such plans expressed.

[skspurling]

Are there issues on US customs? Haven't been able to find a zero at micro-center. I also have not received any response to my product notification at adafruit's web site.

[mikerr]

Eben said as much in the first days of the RPF

Here's one pre-launch in 2011:

We're intending to release the designs for the device at due cost. We can't make any money out of this, we have no incentive to keep the design of the device secret.

We do hope third parties will be able to manufacture clones. We can expand the concept without having to expand the capital base.

http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-t ... 11-12?IR=T

But remember they were only planning on selling 10k units - things changed once it stopped just being the RPF and RS/farnell invested millions in production.

[W. H. Heydt]

As there is such little profit in it for the Foundation either, it might be worthwhile opening the Zero up for cloning as the original plans for the Pi were. The Foundation could become a reseller of SoC's and still make a reasonable profit from selling to cloners.

I'm not sure even that would work very well....

Consider.... The major components of a Pi0 are the SoC, DRAM and 6-layer PCB. Then there is labor, assembly machine amortization, power, facilities cost and all the little fiddly bits on the board. So how much can the SoC actually cost? Probably no more than $1. How much could RPT mark them up, sell them, and the buyer still make a $5 Pi0 clone?

In order to allow "clones" of the Pi0 to be built, somebody is going have to either beat Sony's cost to manufacture (thus improving the profit margin) or sell the assembled boards for more than $5.

In reality, if a company wanted to make a Pi0 (or, really, any Pi) clone, the way to do it is to contact Broadcom and offer to buy enough BCM2835 (or BCM2836) SoCs to attract Broadcom's attention. That would be something on the order of magnitude of hundreds of thousands per calendar quarter. Thus, anyone attempting this needs to have quite a bit of capital to start with. Do you see anyone out there really trying to do this?

[Heater]

mikerr,

Ah, OK, thanks.

The stumbling block here seems to be that nobody can buy the Pi SoC. Except, presumably if they order 100,000 or more from Broadcom.

Effectively if anyone could get the chips they could create a Pi clone already. I can't imagine it's beyond the wit of a serious cloner to reverse engineer the Pi schematic and create a PCB.

[hippy]

hippy,

...opening the Zero up for cloning as the original plans for the Pi were.

Do you have a link to such plans ?

Having followed the Pi closely since the beginning I have never seen such plans expressed.

I am surprised. Eben stated a number of times to see both the Pi itself cloned and the idea of a Pi like computers -

http://interviews.slashdot.org/story/11 ... -questions

"We’ve said elsewhere that our dream scenario is that someone in China decides to copy our design and start knocking out millions of clones. Remember we’re a not-for-profit organization under English law, and all our trustees have other jobs, so we don’t have the same set of incentives as a regular company."

http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-t ... 11-12?IR=T

"We're intending to release the designs for the device at due cost. We can't make any money out of this, we have no incentive to keep the design of the device secret.

We do hope third parties will be able to manufacture clones. We can expand the concept without having to expand the capital base."

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/d ... spberry-pi

"Everything we do is aimed at fostering this sort of community activity, whether it's around software, accessories, or (in due course) licensed and open-source clone manufacture. We're a small organisation which does one thing well; we certainly don't want to stand in the way of third parties who want to add value and make money around the platform."

http://www.designindaba.com/articles/cr ... /take-byte

"We want to see cheap, accessible, programmable computers everywhere; and we actively encourage other companies to clone what we are doing, says Upton."

Of course things change, and understandably so; the Foundation needed licensee manufacturers to meet demand and they need their profits, Raspberry Pi Trading has to make a profit to pay staff and develop future products, the Foundation has to ensure its income stream to pay its staff and pursue their educational goals.

As many ventures have found; idealistic goals have to change when one needs to protect revenue.

[Heater]

Yep.

I think the Foundation has some kind of nice balance between open and closed.

Eben said: "We want to see cheap, accessible, programmable computers everywhere; and we actively encourage other companies to clone what we are doing..."

As it happens a lot of "clones" have sprung up since the Pi arrived. Not exactly clones of course but people attempting to grab a slice of the pie (get it?) perhaps offering better this and better that into the bargain.

So there are "cheap, accessible, programmable computers everywhere". Mission accomplished.

What they don't clone is the support and community. The most valuable part of the Pi.

[hippy]

In order to allow "clones" of the Pi0 to be built, somebody is going have to either beat Sony's cost to manufacture (thus improving the profit margin) or sell the assembled boards for more than $5.

I think there is plenty of opportunity for that, a large enough market for $10 Zeroes to make it worthwhile and hopefully it could be made cheaper and competition amongst cloners could help make it so.

The Foundation could sell SoC's with $2 mark-up, make an even larger profit than manufacturing the Zero itself, and manufacturer's can still make enough profit for themselves. It seems to me that almost everyone would be happy.

The Foundation can still manufacture Zeros at $5 for sale into the educational market and elsewhere where $10 is a prohibitive cost. They could even have them made and give them away to the deserving just as they gave them away with MagPi.

Google gave a $1m grant to make 15,000 Pi's and teaching packs available to school kids. If someone could be found to give the same now that could provide 200,000 free Zeroes. Just $75K could provide 15,000 Pi Zeroes.

[liz]

Keep an eye on The Pi Hut - they're putting a large shipment on sale soon. I was wondering why they hadn't put it up for sale yet: turns out they're waiting on UK customs to clear some accessories they're hoping you guys will buy alongside the Zeros themselves. I'd expect them to be ready to go within the next 48 hours.

[kryptalivian]

Liz,

Any idea when/if Microcenter in the states will get shipments?

[liz]

Afraid not - I don't have an overview of the transatlantic shipping. They ARE getting regular shipments though, so keep an eye out.

[kryptalivian]

Thanks!

[banrep]

why dont they just make it £5 that will give 20% more profit or is that 25%.
ba